


Reading Ahead

by ellymelly



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Spoilers, pre-face of the raven, reading things he shouldn't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-13 00:19:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5687329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellymelly/pseuds/ellymelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's one of his rules and he's gone ahead and broken it!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if you think this has legs for something longer.

He was always getting things in the wrong order. Imagine that – a Time Lord whose recollection of the universe looked like a Jenga tower on the verge of collapse. Part of that was his determination never to read anything in case he set something regrettable in motion. Missy had tried valiantly to explain that Time didn't work like that but it was as good an excuse as any to bumble about with no idea what awaited him. He used to think it made him look cool, now he'd amended that to _chill_ based on current Earth slang.

 _The Impossible Girl_. Clara Oswald. He's never been able to figure her out, not entirely. Scattering herself through his time stream, though ill-advised, wasn't the omniscient answer he'd been searching for. There were still things about her that he couldn't quite place. That was the chief problem with time travel, sometimes you learned things in the wrong order and those future revelations rubbed off too early.

In the end he'd settled on the rarity that maybe he was wrong. She was a normal human, slightly on the aggressive, dishonest, reckless side but that's how he like his humans. Clara. Clara. Clara. He'd come across her story by accident in the Galactic Times, vintage edition published sometime near the end of the last great alien super-alliance.

There he was, minding his own business in the library, sipping coffee that she'd bought from the local, desert markets in _Hallainaz_ when he saw the headline.

He simply couldn't stop himself.

_'Impossible Earthling Sighted in Asteroid Cafe Scandal'_

That's when he was supposed to put the paper down and pretend he'd never seen it. No doubt it was a future adventure – something they hadn't gotten around to yet. Actually, asteroids were loads of fun and he was never one to turn down a scandal. Just a hint then – a clue so he'd know not to pass it up.

_Another confirmed sighting of the living dead. Oswald and her warrior companion were once again the scene of a major, intergalactic dispute. Syphiat teams were sent to recover the Stone of Orion from The Doctor's former companion but the 'Girl Without A Heart' along with the entire cafe vanished into thin air leaving no trace of the beloved relic. Since her death, the human has made many appearances, always with The Unnamed One and usually in the presence of stolen goods._

The Doctor threw the paper across the room to stop himself reading any more. It was too much already. _Former companion_ . _Dead. Impossible._ His impossible girl.

“Something wrong?”

This time, The Doctor dropped his coffee. “Ah – no. Nothing. Nothing at all. Totally fine. Slightly burned but other than that – fine. Ow.”

Clara was shaking her head at him, bemused. “Desert-coffee, you idiot. Of course it's hot. Look, just put up a sign if you're gonna read something indecent down here – then you won't have to worry about interruptions.”

It took him a moment to work it out. He blushed furiously, trying to mount a defense before she wandered off. All he managed was, “Clara! _Ow_. Clara!” before the door closed.


	2. Chapter 2

It happened again, though if The Doctor was completely honest with himself, he'd been looking.

Not  _actively_ and certainly not all the time but there were definitely lingering eyes when they passed through a market place. He always took an extra moment to graze the news screens in every alien city and once – only once – he'd logged into a library database.

“What's gotten into you!” Clara huffed, appearing out of thin air before he could even begin an innocent search. He was going to be careful and start with something vague like, 'impossible'.

“Nothing...” he protested. “It's a library. Libraries are valuable sources of information.”

“This, from the man who compared them with archaeology...” Clara wasn't believing a word of it. The Doctor she knew was a useless sod for fiction but practically eviscerated himself at the first sign of facts. “Come on, what are we really doing here?”

...thankfully they'd stumbled into a crisis shortly after and he theatrically pretended to know all about the  _Cult of the Dust-Covers_ and their reign of terror.

“You've got – _dust_ ,” he pointed at Clara later, stopping her from traipsing it across the control room.

She gave him one of those less-than-patient looks. The Tardis doors closed and the lights kept themselves low with tension. “I'm sure it's more than dust after what we crawled through. You're not immune either,” Clara pointed at his hair, which had gone an odd shade of grey. “Second thoughts, maybe you should keep it. You're a very pretty blonde.”

That had the ancient Time Lord flustered.

After that, he really did behave. No more visiting hoards of knowledge no matter how scandalous the building or riveting the curse. He distracted himself with romps on Earth where there wasn't a scratch in hell of running into unwanted information – although he was starting to get suspicious about the amount of times they visited Jane Austen. She was interesting, no doubt about it but -

_Oh._

The Doctor quickly backtracked into a hedge.  _Oh_ . That wasn't something he was going to un-see for a while. He was still laying in the uncomfortable shrubbery when Clara found him, much later.

“Is this a phase?” she asked, arms folded over her chest. One of her eyebrows was slowly arching in his direction. The Doctor did some very odd things so there was no point jumping to conclusions. Maybe this was how he measured the atmospheric pressure or worked out if there were any impending alien apocalypses on the horizon.

“I was – ah – checking the hedge. For – for -” _Screwdriver. Screwdriver. Where the bloody hell was it?_ “Mitsaphoria!!! Nasty things. Don't want any around. But – no, it's all good. Been laying here for a while and I still have all my clothes – _arms!_ I meant arms. See? Two. Checked everything twice. Two arms.”

Clara's eyebrow twitched. That sounded  _fake_ even by his standards. “You've ah...” she leaned forward and tapped his sonic sunglasses. “Bit dark for these, don' you think? I know you take this revised 'cool' image seriously but you're creeping into vampire territory.”

“Mitsaphoria...” he mumbled to himself.

*~*~*

“On a scale of _'one'_ to _'the universe will collapse in on itself if I don't'_ , where are we?”

Clara hovered at the Tardis door. “Honestly, it depends on how attached you are to your shades.”

There wasn't any point fishing around in his pocket for them – Clara was twirling them in her fingers. “Ha ha. Extremely funny. Well done.” Was it just him, or was she using his possessions as leverage of late?

“It's one dinner. You can manage it.”

“But-”

“Nondescript, average sort of lifeforms. Your favourite. They're not going to try and eat us. The world won't end and I'm pretty certain that the restaurant isn't run by a prehistoric robot colony harvesting organs.”

The Doctor scratched his head. “And I'll be going as-?”

Sometimes she really did want to smack him. Or snap these ridiculous sunglasses he loved so much. “Boyfriend. Obviously. Hurry up.”

“Clara – I'm not your -” _oh what was the use?_

As it turned out, there was a delegation of sentient fungi disguised as Romans in the corner. No one else seemed to notice. Honestly. Humans were the least observant race in the universe. It was their key to survival – ignore reality. He was sure there was a song about that - or would be a song.  


Technically it was a work dinner. The only surviving teacher from three years ago kept giving The Doctor odd looks that had nothing to do with his sunglasses. “Isn't that the janitor?” she finally asked, leaning around the table while the others were watching The Doctor perform an unwise, yet highly entertaining trick with an upturned bottle and deck of anti-gravity cards.

“Ah... Yeah. I guess. It was sort of a temporary thing. He's actually a doctor.”

“Doctor of what?”

“Annoying trivia, most of the time.” The woman laughed and Clara got away with the lie.

Of course, the biggest problem with being a successful date were the inevitable repeats. The Doctor's not exactly sure what order things unravelled in but he definitely ended up in a bar, cafe, backstage party and hens night (as the most under-resourced chaperon possible). He still had a pink feather boa wrapped around the console although he couldn't decide if the Tardis was partial to it.

“No, that's it!”

He was lying on the floor when she came in, laden with school books. Clara frowned, not sure what to make of him. It could have been five minutes or ten years since they'd last met – or that one time when he dropped her off before he picked her up and he'd been slapped by two versions of herself  _at the same time._ “Just so we clear – is this universe-threatening or, sort of – more Doctor-centric melodrama?”

“No more human-based parties. I beg you. I'm dead. Gone. Lost to the cracks of Time.” _Dead_. His hands pressed against his face. Those words wouldn't leave him. _Former_. Was it something he did?

Clara nudged him with her boot. “Planets. Come on! I didn't skip class to watch you mope.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Doctor _no!_ ”

“It's only-”

“No.”

“-tiny sort of fluffy-”

“We've been through this.” Clara's reply was firm and her posture as rigid as the door she'd slam in his face if he kept on being an idiot. What was up with him anyway? She'd left him alone five minutes (or three weeks according to him) and now he'd gone all doe-eyed over some random amalgamation of fur and eyes that he'd picked up from the depths of space. Too many goddamn eyes... She wasn't letting him keep it! They'd agreed that the Tardis was _shared_ accommodation and any strays had to be jointly approved.

“-the eyes are just so – roundish.” He was enamoured with the bloody thing, holding it in his arms. The creature in question wasn't quite so thrilled about its present situation. It certainly wasn't a cat but it definitely shared the same disdain for being manhandled by biped lifeforms.

“Ten eyes!” Clara stepped forward, holding up both hands and all of her fingers. “Nothing in the universe needs that many eyes! What is it with you and eyes anyway?” The thing in The Doctor's arms made a sort of mewing sound causing her to back away aggressively. Absolutely _bloody_ not. “Right, see this blackboard?” It was behind them, divided by a chalk line which they'd been arguing over for a while. “Pros. Cons. Oh look, more cons. I'm adding to this side, _'turns you into a single celled organism.'_ ”

“How 'come you get to hold the chalk?” he complained.

“Because you're holding the _thing_.”

“Clara, aren't you the one always harping on that I need to make more of an effort to fit into Earth customs?”

Clara had no idea where he was going with this. Besides, she'd been referring to small talk and hand-shaking. “I don't follow.”

“Humans are mad about cats.” He finished with the famous, _I'm clever when I'm cute_ smile that only worked on River.

Clara seriously considered slapping him into his next regeneration. “ _That_ is  _not_ a cat. It's a – a – a...”

“ _Spaletiquex._ ” He helped.

She scowled. “Watch my lips...” she started slowly, then frowned when she noticed he was staring instead of listening as she spoke. “Doctor?” There'd been an unexpected pause in his concentration. “What on Earth are you doing?”

It took him a moment but he finally got there. “Watching.  _OW!!!”_ Both the Doctor and the Spaletiquex flinched. The Tardis lights flickered with the impact of her palm on his freshly shaven cheek. “Why has that happened?”

There was a thawing silence between them broken only by the odd sounds coming from the creature in his arms.

“Ten eyes...” Clara said slowly, with less venom in her voice.

“Yes,” he replied, “it's all eyes – I thought you two would get along.”

“Mycroft can stay.”

“What – No! Clara...” It was his turn to be appalled at her choice in name.

“Yes.”

In the end, it became the Tardis' pet, stalking around the endless rooms at night – hunting  _hell knows what_ else was living in the ancient spaceship. It still visited them for pets – or to lay over the abandoned piles of books. Clara even caught The Doctor talking to it a few times with something akin to affection. He honestly like it and she was incapable of staying mad at him.

“ _Touch that and you'll have a lot less eyes to worry about,”_ Clara confronted Mycroft, when he got within a paw of her favourite skirt.

*~*~*

It was a cunning plan, really – or so The Doctor like to think. He'd be reading up on humans. For all the time he'd spent stealing the odd one and whisking them away on adventures it had finally occurred to him that he really didn't know much about how they lived when the world wasn't in crisis.

What did humans do anyway?

How'd they keep the eternal tick of the universe from turning them mad in their brief gasps of life?

Well,  _pets_ appeared to be imperative to survival so that's exactly what he'd gone and acquired. As far as he could tell it was working. The only slight flaw in this aforementioned brilliant plan was that he'd become more attached to the damn thing than Clara was. Mycroft was a tiny bit destructive but ultimately less trouble than a second human.

Maybe, if Clara liked Mycroft enough, she wouldn't leave.

_Yes_ , he was aware that such sentiments made no sense in relation to time-space continuity but if anything could break the laws of Time, it'd be a cat.

*~*~*

“We _always_ go,” Clara was by the door, waiting impatiently for the Tardis to land. The Doctor was stalling on her and she didn't like it. He could be so fussy sometimes, playing with his coat or fiddling with the knobs on the Tardis console. It was all for show. “The Cascade Alignment will still be there when we're finished. Come on! This is important.”

The Doctor was evasive and dreadful at hiding things. He could lie brilliantly about specific events but when it came to a general aura of something going wrong, he was an open bloody book – just like that one he caught  _Mycroft_ sleeping on.  _'Impossible Things and How to Spot Them'_ . He couldn't prove it but he was absolutely certain that the Tardis had left it open at  _that_ page, now he was utterly paranoid about arriving in the wrong year and Clara seeing – well, something she very much wasn't supposed to.

“Would you stop making so much noise please?” he feigned complaint and proceeded to park the Tardis badly.

Clara frowned, reaching for the handrail as everything lurched to the left. “Honestly, where did you learn to fly? Oh wait... No. You car-jacked this thing when you were a bloody teenager. Now I remember.”

He joined her at the door, brandishing an umbrella.

There were a few benefits in travelling with a Time Lord, Clara thought to herself, they knew what the weather was going to be like. Honestly, there was probably a very lucrative career buried somewhere in there.

“What – why are you doing that? Why are you laughing?” The Doctor demanded, as they stepped into the rain, shielded by his enormous umbrella. It was so big it nearly took flight.

“Nothing,” Clara lied, her head still filled with visions of him presenting the weather in some ludicrous outfit.

“Stop it... You're making it rain harder.”

“Laughter doesn't make it rain, Doctor.”

Her laughter didn't distract him entirely from the nest of fear in his stomach. As they slipped by the iron gates he found himself peering around the corner. One day he was going to get this wrong and there'd be a third stone, looming over the dead flowers.

Somewhere in the universe, Clara Oswald was dead _and it killed him_.


	4. Chapter 4

This time it wasn't technically reading ahead... He'd been directly confronted by an alien in a bar blurting out information the Doctor wasn't supposed to be party to. The awkward creature with more limbs than sense, shuffled up beside him, laid a tentacle on the bar and stared.

The Doctor wasn't sure if he should say anything. Staring was part of some cultures and it was considered impolite to interrupt the activity. Still, there was an equally large sect that interpreted staring as a prelude to a traditional bar fight which the Doctor really didn't want to get involved. Clara had been pretty definitive on that subject after the last time. Eventually, he settled on the Earth-norm.

“Hi.”

“S'true?” The alien bubbled back at him.

The Doctor was sure that if the Tardis hadn't been translating, the creature would sound like someone screaming underwater. “You're going to have to be more specific.”

“The relic. You 'ave it.”

The major gripe with being a time traveller is that you were never really quite sure if you were lying. Truth was relative. “I don't think so. At least, not at this exact moment but that is not to say that I might not have it at a future time.”

“We will war with you.”

The Doctor's eyebrows quickly arched in opposing directions. This was escalating fast. “That's _really_ not necessary. I could just – you know – give it back – if I knew what it was...”

“War!”

The creature hit his tentacle on the bar, making the glasses bounce. The Doctor curled his hand protectively around his drink and slid it to safety. The alien was making strange sounds that the Tardis couldn't translate. That was okay, he didn't need any help understanding a threat.

“Making new friends?”

The Doctor jumped at Clara's voice behind him. She strolled through the crowd, parting them like a mythical see. When he tried that he ended up shoved into a corner or punched in the face. She paused by his side. They were the same height like this, her standing, him sitting on the rickety bar stool that threatened to tip over every time he breathed.

“Clara this is – ah – thing.” The Doctor tried to introduce the moody alien politely but failed.

“Well that explains why you're being death-stared,” Clara replied. She leaned in, adding in a whisper. “You probably shouldn't go around referring to sentient lifeforms as, 'things'.”

If the alien creature had a jaw, it'd be on the bar by now. It was staring at Clara with a mixture of terror, anger and confusion.

“Seriously, Doctor... What did you do to it?”

“Now _you're_ calling the thing an 'it',” he pointed out.

“I – it's not the same thing!” she protested.

“Yes it is.”

“No, _it's not_.”

“Is.”

“ _Not._ ”

The Doctor lifted his arms dramatically to one-up her on his reply when – when he toppled straight off the back of his stool and ended up, a mangle of Timelord on the floor. Clara folded her arms. The barcreature decided to quietly remove the Doctor's drink.

“Are you happy now?” Clara asked him, before leaning over and offering her his hand. She looked quite ludicrous helping him back to his feet, dusting his jacket off. “Your friend's run off.”

The Doctor spun around on the spot, looking for the warmongering alien. “Odd. I thought he was rather of a mind to murder me.”

“Dare I ask why?”

“Pretty sure I'm going to steal something from him in the future.”

“Have you ever considered purchasing items instead of flat out thieving?”

“No.”

Clara leaned over the bar and silently ordered two more drinks with the hand signals she'd picked up. “Well there you have it then. If you're going to continue stealing, which, if this encounter is any prelude to your future behaviour, you'll just have to get used to confrontation. What does your archaeologist friend do in situations like this?”

“Normally she starts shooting. I think I might drink.”

A decision which Clara chided him for later, when he was laid against the door of his Tardis, too totalled to stand.

“I know – don't look at me,” Clara replied to the Tardis, when the time machine voiced her disapproval through mood lighting. “Maybe you should lock the controls in case he drunk-dials the time vortex or something.” She hoped that the Tardis took her seriously.

Sighing, Clara folded her arms and roamed over to the Doctor. She knelt down on the floor in front of him, reaching forward to feel his forehead. “Warm... I'm not sure drinking is good for Timelords.”

Taking her by surprise, he reached up and wrapped both his hands around her arm, tugging it down playfully. If he'd been wearing a bow-tie he'd nearly pass for his previous incarnation.

“It's _bigger_ ,” he started, giddy. His eyes wildly looked around the Tardis console as if he'd never seen it before. “On the inside.”

“Oh my god...”

“Than it is -”

“Doctor... Don't.”

“-on the outside!”

“Well done. Tardis one-o-one. Why don't we get you to bed?” _Where you can't do any damage,_ she thought to herself. The Doctor blushed heavily in response, to which Clara rolled her eyes and tried to drag him to his feet. “You're such hard work. Please don't – no – _Doctor –_ stop it!” She fought to untangle him from the umbrella stand by the door that he'd developed an immediate and intense affection for. “Don't make me call Missy. Because I will. I'm sure she'd _love_ to mind you.”

They were halfway down a corridor, en-route to the Doctor's bedroom when she nearly slipped on a magazine left laying on the floor. She leaned the Doctor against the wall for a moment while she knelt down, picking up the dangerous item. She was about to toss it on a nearby table when something caught her eye.

_'The Human's Immortal'_

Her first thought was of her and the Doctor. She supposed that, considering he kept appearing all over time and space, the creatures of the universe would perceive him to be immortal. He'd been there at the beginning and she was certain that one day he'd sit on the edge of its death to watch the last star burn.

“Keeping stories about yourself now, are you?” she asked, holding it up.

The Doctor drunkenly lunged at the magazine, falling as he grabbed hold of it, ripping it out of Clara's hand muttering,  _'No!'_

“Take it easy!” she bent down, levering him off the floor. The magazine vanished into his coat (which she was certain had some kind of Timelord pockets considering what came out of them). “Next time you regenerate, can you try not being over six foot? You're very difficult to manoeuvre.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Why are River's high heels on the console...”

The Doctor simply looked up with that,  _'shouldn't the answer to that be obvious'_ face that made Clara want to strap him to the outside of the Tardis and go for a joyride. He thought he was being cute, cross-legged on the floor beneath the Tardis tangled in bits of his time machine. He was dead wrong.

“She ah-”

“Yes...” Clara waited less-than-patiently for an answer, arms folded.

“-pops in, from time to time.”

“I didn't see her.”

“Well that would rather defeat the purpose.”

“What purpose?”

“Stealing is usually meant to be a stealthful sort of activity. Why are you doing a _thing_ with your eyes?”

The 'thing' was called  _annoyed_ . Clara stalked closer, her own formidable heels echoing on the metal floor. “You're telling me that your wife nicks your Tardis while we're out having coffee and takes it for a spin? With all my stuff inside!”

“She brings it back!”

The Tardis in question let out a  _squeak_ when he prodded something he shouldn't with his sonic screwdriver. “Besides, what am I supposed to do about it? She's an archaeologist with a key. Now – go do something human-y. I need some 'Doctor-time' to fix my ship. Poor old girl. Look what's gone and happened to you, eh?”

Clara narrowed her already annoyed eyes. “What happened to the ship?” It'd been perfectly fine when they set out for coffee and as far as she knew there was nothing dangerous in Edinburgh. "Now it won't even take off. We're stuck in a city of angry, moody eyebrows with a malfunctioning space-taxi."  


“Not exactly sure,” the Doctor admitted.

“Doctor?”

“What...”

“Is that _lipstick_ on the front door?” _She really hoped that River didn't have the Doctor's habit of bringing home strays._  


There was a long silence before. “You're eyes a doing another thing.”

To prevent herself from committing a massive paradox along the lines of murdering the Doctor, Clara retired to Tardis library. For some reason, presumably the Tardis' acute sense of humour, it changed location on an hourly basis. This time she found it opening onto the swimming pool (which now sported a brand new line of palm trees). Clara shook her head at the scene. There were pool towels scattered around the edge of the water along with a sarong which didn't belong to her. Unless the Doctor had suddenly developed a fondness for bright red swimming accessories, it was River's.

"My god, what is it with Timelords!" she muttered, to no one in particular. Clara closed the doors to the pool and found a comfortable library chair to curl up in. Their alien-cat was hidden nearby. Clara could hear its weird version of purring coming from the shadows.

The Doctor, meanwhile, was doing his best to fix his poor machine. Whatever River had done with it wasn't gentle. In fact, the Doctor suspected that she'd been running away from something - something that had taken a few good shots at her. He didn't want to say it but maybe Clara was right and one day he'd come back for his Tardis and it simply wouldn't be there. He made a mental note to have a word to River about the conditions of her theft. Eventually.

"Oh, it's not so bad," he cooed at the collection of wires, broken pipes and vortex energy. "A new lick of paint and you'll be fine."

Being the least observant creature in the universe, the Doctor wandered past most spoilers of his future which littered the universe. There was a reason they'd had trouble turning him into a Timelord in the first place - high on that list was his utter inability to pay attention. In fact, it wasn't until a flyer left in the Tardis by River _hit him in the face_ that he noticed it. The Doctor screwed up his nose and peeled the pamphlet from his face. He was astonished at what he found.

**_REWARD - 1 MILLION CREDITS_ **

**_THE HEARTLESS HUMAN & IMMORTAL COMPANION_ **

What followed was a short article about the destruction of a sacred temple and raiding of another priceless relic. If he didn't know better, he'd guess that River had been after the same thing when she ran across future-Clara and whomever it was that she'd taken to traveling with.

The thought actually made him sick. There was no denying it - at some point Clara was going to bugger off and start traveling with someone else - someone who had a time machine considering the evidence. Another Timelord? The only other one he knew of was Missy but he doubted very much Missy would traipse around after dusty relics. Ruling planets and causing general affray was more her thing.

He scrunched up the flyer and threw it into a gap in the console that led to the heart of the Tardis where it would be vaporised. He couldn't risk Clara coming across any mentions of her future.

 _Don't even think about it!_ He chastised himself. _It's not like you can go about changing the future. You know how that works out. It doesn't. Now think about something else. Souffles. Sure. That'll do._

*~*~*

Clara felt a shiver run through her whole body as her finger brushed over the spine of a book. She'd been innocently casing his library in search of something to read when she'd found it.

_**Death and Everything Inbetween - Clara Oswald** _

Immediately she backed away. Wherever River had taken the Tardis on its last outing, it had come back with a new set of books. Unless Clara had lost more than her sunglasses on that party planet, she hadn't written any memoirs lately which meant that this was the product of her future self. _I have a future_ , she found herself thinking. At least that was promising. Her curiosity burned. That was it - right there at her fingertips - everything that was going to happen to her. She itched for a taste - a quick flick through the chapter titles. How bad could it be? It was only a book. No harm ever came from reading a book.

"Don't do it."

The Doctor's voice was quiet behind her. He was standing by the door sporting another ridiculously punk t-shirt under one of his many hoodies.

"I wasn't gonna..." Clara replied.

He tilted his head knowingly at her. They lied to each other so frequently he was starting to unravel the truth. "Whatever is in that book - it's only a possibility. That's the thing about Time - it moves about, rearranges itself - bends its own rules. Nothing is certain until it's happened and even then..."

"Are you saying that I never write this book, Doctor?" she let her hand fall away from it.

He shrugged. "Maybe - maybe not. Maybe you write it a thousands times and it's always different."

"Where did it come from?"

"I've stopped asking where the Tardis gets things from a long time ago."

"Well, I was serious when I said that I don't want a preview of my future. If she's gonna keep stuff like this laying around can you at least have it put on the top shelf where I can't reach it?"

She delivered the line so dead that it took the Doctor a moment to laugh. He offered her his hand, which she took, before they both wandered over to the fire. "How long are you planning on traveling the universe, Ms Oswald?" He asked the question warmly, picking out a non-spoilery book for her to read. It was excellent, written by a race of extremely inept creatures that continually found themselves in situations which everyone else found amusing.

"If you're tryin' kick me out - you could just say," she teased him, flicking through her new book. "Nah - relax. I'm kidding."

Her real answer was another silence, which the Doctor had learned to translate as, 'forever'. He'd know that the minute she'd dragged a suitcase larger than herself on board. That was when everything changed. In fact, he only took her back to Earth to teach. She didn't even sleep in her apartment any more.

"Why are you always so worried, Doctor? The last few weeks - it's like you think I'm going to run out that door and never come back. Has something happened?"

"No. No. No. No. No..." he mumbled, mostly convincingly. "It's just - humans - you know? You're a fickle race. First shiny thing you see and you're off. Like a cat to a laser point."

"Some humans, maybe - though the same could be said of Timelords," she added with a rather judgmental loft of her eyebrow. "Actually that's kind of your definition. What's the longest you've ever stayed in one place? A week - a year?"

"Well there was that Christmas when -"

"That doesn't count," she quickly waved her hand at him.

She was perfectly right though. "Well - I've stayed with the Tardis a fair while - does _that_ count?"

Clara smiled. "Yeah, all right. I'll let you count that." She kept flicking through the book, smiling occasionally. "You're stuck with me, you know," she added. "I like your timeship a great deal."

"And the pilot?"

"He's all right."

 


End file.
